Theology From the Rocks Whence We Are Hewn

A few years ago, we noted RavYitzhakArama’s vehement rejection of Ramban’s famous adjuration against seeking medical, as opposed to prophetic, counsel and treatment for maladies. I recently encountered another interesting, albeit somewhat more subtle, example of divergence between the latter’s famous and eloquent (albeit deeplyproblematicandapparentlyinconsistent) insistence on the all-encompassing nature of Divine Providence and the former’s passionate, reiterated insistence that not all human events are predetermined; a man’s fate is often in his own hands; and human endeavor (“השתדלות”) is consequently of paramount importance. Contrast the emphasized phrases in the following passages

So while Ramban maintains that an important lesson of the Book of Genesis is the truth of predestination and the futility of human endeavor, R. Arama calls this a “bad” and “foolish” doctrine, which the Book serves to repudiate. [To be fair, the latter’s formulation of the pernicious doctrine is that “all [human] endeavor is futile, and predestination true”, and he certainly concedes the truth of the properly qualified doctrine: “sometimes endeavor is futile, and predestination true”.]